Lisa Vaas talks about US borders and laptop seizures

Lisa Vaas states that “US customs can and will seize laptops and cellphones, [and] demand passwords”. Her article should be required reading for anyone crossing US borders. She cites an article in Sunday’s Boston Globe which describes the seizure of researcher David House’s laptop, with the authorities apparently looking for House’s connections with Bradley Manning.

Lisa makes it very clear that the American Constitution counts for nothing at the borders, and that the authorities are free to seize and search pretty much at will.

There is no mention on whether House’s computer was encrypted. But at the beginning of this year (too late for this incident) the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a single new year resolution: full disk encryption as a matter of course for all computers.

In one instance, ICE held onto David House’s laptop, thumb drive, and digital camera for 49 days. An acquaintance of accused WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning, Mr. House was returning from Mexico when agents confiscated his electronic equipment. While the Justice Department conceded that it held onto his laptop for longer than thirty days, it explained that “[t]he lack of password access required ICE computer experts to spend additional time on Mr. House’s laptop.” Kevin Poulsen, Feds Defend Seizure of Wikileaks Supporter’s Laptop, Wired Threat Level ( July 28, 2011).

Needless to say, the Wired article gives further details. My assumption is that the US authorities got past House’s access password, but not any encryption on the system.

Either way, the moral of this story is that if you value the privacy of your data and even think about visiting the United States, either don’t, or make sure you use the strongest whole disk encryption you can get.